Man
came late to Kerala even though Kerala today is the most heavily
over-populated region of India --4% of all Indians live on 1%
of India's land. It seems that Stone-Age people deliberately avoided
the forests of Kerala infested by Malaria-bearing mosquitoes and
man-eating tigers. No relic of the Stone Age, not a single authentic
Neolithic implement, has been discovered in any parts of Kerala.
Mankind appeared on Kerala soil as an Iron-Age builder of megaliths.

Megaliths
or huge burial stones carved by iron implements are scattered
all along the ghats of Wynad in the north to Trivandrum in the
south. My research shows a pattern of distribution for these stones
extending all the way from Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh along
the Nepal Valley down through the Vindhya Mountains to Tamil Nadu
and the High Ranges of Kerala. This pattern indicates that Kerala'searly
people were originally from the Northwest of India.

The
megalithic types of Kerala -- similar to those of Brittany and
Cornwall--are isolated and multiple dolmens, port-hole cists,
menhirs, kudakallus or umbrella stones, topikallus
or cap stones, and rock-cut caves. In many caves archeologists
have found, especially during the Varkala Tunnel construction,
old pots of the "black-and-red-ware" variety and human bones.
At some sites even terra cotta figurines have been discovered.
Topikallu and kudakallu are sepulchral monuments
under which are found burial urns in pits. The remarkable thing
about the Kerala megaliths is that they are not as old as the
Harappan culture (2500-1500 B.C.). According to Sir Mortimer Wheeler
and many historians, the megalith culture was introduced into
Kerala between 300 B.C. and 50 A.D. Megalithic evidence shows
that the builders came originally from Northwestern India and
entered Kerala's High Ranges around 200 B.C.

Though
we are unable to identify these early inhabitants of Kerala with
any certainty, we can be certain that their descendants are alive
and well in Kerala today. These people, Keralites of Kerala and
elsewhere, are, in the view of anthropologists, "an ethnological
museum." Several racial strains are easily recognized in the racial
composition of the Keralites of different communities. There are
still a number of "white" or fair-skinned Brahmins of the Aryan
stock; according to the Kannada tradition. King MayuraVarma sent
Brahmin families to Kerala from Ahichatra in North India.

Some
point out the Negrito element as representing the earliest inhabitants
of Kerala; some members of the hill tribes of Kadar, Kanikkar,
Uralis, and Paniyar have curly to frizzy hair, black skin, broad
noses, thick lips, and round heads that are characteristic of
the Negroes of the Andaman Islands, Malay Peninsula, and Africa.
However, the Australoids also have similar features; the Australoid
group is the major racial element in the Munda or Kolarian population
of North and Central India and in the Dravidian population of
South India. Some anthropologists even notice distinctive Mongoloid
features in Kerala Dravidians.

Race
Mixing

It
is a truism to say that to a greater or lesser extent mankind
is a mixture of races. But it is true. Pure races do not exist
in the human species. Everywhere racial mixing is taking place
just as sex-mixing is taking place among different breeds of cows
and dogs. All human races cross easily and produce normal, healthy
progeny with generally improved physical and mental qualities.